L[i/o]ving cities

For sure that any time you have asked yourself: Does the size really matters? Well, I am going to answer your question if you are thinking about airports. In former posts I have made some measures of some of the biggest airports all around the world; you can look at these posts to see the maps of the airports:
1. Europe
2. North America
3. Asia-Australia
4. South America-Africa-Middle East

This means that these 33 airports occupies the awesome area of 61.750 Ha that it is more or less Singapore´s size. The mean area for these airports is 1.871 Ha.

Secondly, I also going to show the passengers´ ranking, this is the following:

AIRPORT

PASSENGERS

Atlanta Airport

92365860

Beijing Internacional airport

77403668

Londres, Heathrow

69433565

Chicago O´Hare

66561023

Tokyo, Haneda

62263025

Los Angeles International

61848449

París, Charles de Gaulle

60970551

Dallas Fort Worth

57806152

Frankfurt Airport

56436255

Hong Kong

53314213

Denver International Airport

52699298

Dubai International Airport

50977960

Amsterdam, Schipol

49754910

Madrid Barajas

49644302

New International Bangkok Airport

47910744

New York, JFK

47854283

Shanghai, Pudong

41450211

Roma Fiumicino

37651222

Sydney airport

36022614

New Delhi, Indira Gandhi international airport

34729467

Barcelona, El Prat

34387597

Toronto Pearson

33434199

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (Mumbai-Delhi)

30439122

Sao Paulo, Guarulhos International

30371131

Mexico, Aeropuerto Internacional Ciudad de Mexico

26368861

Washington-dulles

23056291

Moscu Sheremetyevo

22555309

Salt lake City

20440913

Cairo International Airport (Wadi al Jandali)

16148480

Rio de Janeiro, Galeao International Airport

15184350

Kansas city

10469892

Buenos Aires, Pistarini

8786807

King Fahd International Airport

5267000

It is also amazing that the total amount of people that have used these 33 airports in 2011 is 1.384.007.724 (font Wikipedia). This amount of people is similar to China´s population, wow!

But the real question in this post is if size really matters for air traffic and airport management. Well, I think that if we compare the size of the airports with the amount of people that uses each airport we will have some idea about it. Watch the table below:

AIRPORT

PAX/AREA

Londres, Heathrow

57146,967

Atlanta Airport

56840,529

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (Mumbai-Delhi)

52937,603

Los Angeles International

46678,075

Sydney airport

43930,017

Tokyo, Haneda

43088,599

Hong Kong

41489,66

Mexico, Aeropuerto Internacional Ciudad de Mexico

38494,688

Frankfurt Airport

38392,01

Barcelona, El Prat

36197,471

Sao Paulo, Guarulhos International

35521,791

Dubai International Airport

35278,865

Beijing Internacional airport

33220,458

New York, JFK

31379,858

Roma Fiumicino

26990,123

Moscu Sheremetyevo

25777,496

Chicago O´Hare

25502,308

Amsterdam, Schipol

23806,177

Toronto Pearson

20141,084

París, Charles de Gaulle

19667,92

New Delhi, Indira Gandhi international airport

19621,168

Madrid Barajas

16276,82

New International Bangkok Airport

16077,431

Rio de Janeiro, Galeao International Airport

15983,526

Dallas Fort Worth

13258,292

Buenos Aires, Pistarini

13114,637

Denver International Airport

12547,452

Salt lake City

12502,087

Shanghai, Pudong

12373,197

Washington-dulles

10224,519

Kansas city

8116,1953

Cairo International Airport (Wadi al Jandali)

6332,7373

King Fahd International Airport

1544,5748

In this case we can see the incredible variation of the ratio PAX/AREA. From the most efficient airport, that is London Heathrow with 57.147 passengers managed per Hectare, to the least efficient airport, that is King Fahd International Airport with 1.545 passengers managed in 1 Hectare, there is a difference of 37 times more efficiency for London Heathrow.

Well, also considering that the size ratio between the biggest and the smallest of these airports (Dallas Fort Worth vs Chhatrapati Shivaji International) is 7,5 times, we can see how there is a lack of planning & management in the soil occupation of these infrastructures.

Considering the importance of keeping natural soils, I think this example is pretty clear about how infrastructures can be more or less sustainable on soil occupation.

Like this:

I want to stop talking about airports for a while and continue talking about smart cities. In former posts I have talked about Smart Cities and I have said that it is important that citizens have to be the new center of decision of smart citizens. I have also supported that technology does not have to be the next barrier or the next excuse to oust citizens from public decisions.

In this City Lines post I also want to make you know this brilliant initiative to build our Smart Cities

You can see how this initiative goes one step beyond of what I said before and tries to build the smart city in a collaborative way. If we work with open source, open hardware solutions and collaborative people it is posible to have low cost solutions to build this smart cities that sometimes sound really odd for citizens. This is a brilliant idea that puts the citizen in the middle of the city construction and give us the tools to start making our own smart city.

Beyond this initiative it is also amazing how crowdfunding platforms as Goteo are arising in the Web. This kind of tools are already a real way to find the funds that governments are not able to provide to this kind of start up initiatives.

The other day I read a post (and I republished it in CityLines Facebook page) about the largest airports in the world, it talked about the number of people passing through them each year. When I was reading I thought, well, actually I have not ever read about the size of the largest airports in the world, so I decided to measure them by myself, and I realized that it was pretty interesting.

I just took the Google Earth tool to define the limit of the airports by photo interpretation. Then I used the Esri free application for iPad to measure the airport polygons. I measured the airports that I supposed that were the biggest in every continent. Now, I am going to publish the largest airports in 4 different posts. The order of publication will be related with the continent of the airports:

Somehow, when somebody talks to me about smart cities I start thinking about all the movies of the 80´s that I used to watch in my childhood, and I remember some futuristic cities and situations. Of all these movies, the strongest memory I have is from Tron, (the classical one, of course) with the red and blue motorbikes racing for their lives. Wow, it was amazing thinking about what the technology would provide!!

Tron was about a “supermachine” that controlled people´s memories and lives, and there was a character (the good one) that was trying to recover people´s lives. Actually, smart cities could have some similarities with that script, and I will explain.

I really agree with ICTs and other new technologies as a tool to improve our life quality and to achieve a better efficiency in the use of natural resources. I also think that it is absolutely necessary to invest in ICTs in our forthcoming smart cities, because nowadays´ civil engineering know-how is based on 19th and 20th century technologies.

But on the other hand, all these improvements cannot be presented as a new enlightened despotism ruled by Tron´s “supermachines”. Smart cities should not be ruled by new technocrat elites who know the performance of the new technologies and who tells us what machines “think” that are better for cities. Those could be smart cities, but definitely they are not smarter cities.

I think that technologists have to be the facilitators to get ICTs closer to citizens. Citizens have to be the new center of decision of smart cities and citizens have to be educated to consider social, environmental and economic criteria in their decisions. I also think that we have enough new ways of data visualization, communication media and social networks to be effective enough in this thrilling process of educating people and bringing smart cities (sorry, smarter cities) closer to citizens.